A balancing act: a blog

Through the good offices of MattDenness and purplefizz, at the intro thread, ( And I introduce myself.. ) , I have come to this one. And its mighty interesting! So i thought i'd start my own.

My foray into poker shall be a balancing act. I balance a full time job, a full time girlfriend, a kickboxing hobby, a mountaineering fascination all along with online poker. And i do not want to ignore any one of them! Oh well, having too much to do is infinitely better than having nothing to do...

My first introduction to poker, was in our hostel rooms. We'd play no limit hold em at Rs1/Rs2 (approx 2c/4c) blinds through the night. We didn't have chips, so additional packs of cards would be used in the stead. That led to very interesting situations, as, when the game wove on, and the buyin's piled, we'd run out of cards. Then came in the 'Objects' ! When a player busted, and needed a buy-in, he'd pick up an object from the room, and enter it into play.

The poker games in the initial days were hilarious, each player having a motley assortment of tootpaste tubes, computer mice and phones as their stacks. The low point of my poker game was when i went all-in on the river, throwing a toothpaste tube (50 Rs =$1 buyin) with my left hand, with nothing but a 5 pair. The board was A
J
5
2
7
The opponent was holding the A high flush, and I was laughed away from the game. For months, nay, years later, the left hand toss was talked about!

I'm glad to say, my game has improved somewhat since. I have been digesting the PS content, and grinding c50 sng's and $1 hu sng's on poker770. Am only breakeven about 1 month into my online poker stint, but I'm looking forward to playing a lot more of this most remarkable of games!

Shall keep posting with updates, rants, graphs and all other things that we poker players do.

I got a call at about 9 in the evening, calling me to a poker game across town. Friends of a friend throwing a party. So i drove out, about 25km and picked up some people on the way.

We got there, and the people kept pouring in. Finally there were about 15 of us, so we had to break into 2 tables and play. We played NL5/10 with a Rs250 Buyin. (Rs50~$1)
I started off with pocket Jacks, and got it all in on the flop. Early double up!
It soon became apparent that most people were quite drunk and so it became my duty to separate them from their money..

One interesting rule they played with: the player with initiative would be first to act in further betting rounds. So if i am dealer and raise pre flop, i am first to act on the flop! This took away tonnes of the edge of playing with position. But as i said, drunk players! Took in about 1.2k all told. Good times.

My time off from online poker is thus now ended. I shall devote myself to study today, and put in 10 tables of 0.50+0.10 full handed tournaments tomorrow. Shall update with progress.

This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by alphabeat: 21.02.2012 18:01.

Hey whattup!

Decided to move the ranty posts where they belong, to the downswing report page. Here i shall blog again!

Found this book called "All in, the (almost) completely true story of the WSOP" Found it in a junk store for a dollar, and what a gem it was! Yeah, no poker education there, but getting into the minds (some very troubled indeed) of poker Gods over the ages is mighty nice. Feel like i missed out on the big boom of poker, but wth, i'm sure these things go in circles.

Oki! Shall go and put in a few sets of $0.6! Shall tell you if the going is good.

Goals for the week ahead:
1 set of 5 sng's every day
1 set of sng early in the morning on some day (i'm an owl)
encore: 1 set after a session of lurvvemaking. That one should be interesting!

Played good poker today. 1 set of 5 sng's of $.60. Made precisely 0 money today, but very +ev. The 2 times i bubbled were to runner runner impossiblities. And i didn't win my last only cos of a lucky river card. Happies!

Picked up fooled by randomness and black swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He talks of life on the markets as a complex game of russian roulette, with infinite barrels and one bullet. And thus you forget that there even is a bullet, before it gets you. And such random impossibly rare events are called Black Swans.

This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by alphabeat: 14.03.2012 19:21.

He wassup!

Been a rough month! Was moving up the limits from $ 0.2sng's to a more BRM sensible $0.5. And began experimenting with 2-3 tabling. As a result of all this, BR took a large hit right down the middle. But now am back, woo! Up about 15 buy ins since the start of the month.

Now my BR stands at a not too disrespectable $33.40. Tom dwan, i'm gunning for you next!

In other news, I've gotten back to kickboxing again! I had suffered a minor incident of broken-nose circa september 2011 (and you just gotta love youtube), and was sitting home scared since then. Then, finally, I'm back! Still folding to most fre-flop raises there, but I'll be round-house kick shoving in no time. And the exercise is great for the poker mindset too, i find.

A random musing: Ever wondered how arguments are so much like a raise-reraise-3 bet-all-in-Fold, sequence?

This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by alphabeat: 23.03.2012 20:40.

Wassup people!

Didn't go to fight club today as the bunch went partying.

Nice day, but played some terrible poker, lost 5 buy ins of 0.5+0.1. Feeling blue, I joined a 50c freeze out MTT. Went in halfway or so, and was sucked out on. Again with 2 pair! Its always 2 pair versus flush, aargh!

The time being 1 o clock in the morning, never a right time to do anything but sleep, I discovered madness. Madness, thy name is POT LIMIT OMAHA!

10$ guaranteed tourney, had been running 3 mins or so, and with a BR of $26, i though, of wtf and signed in, thinking my dollar all but gone. But whaddya know, swingy as it is, the game is hilarious fun! Here's my favourite hand

Following that blessed tourney win and watching dozens of PLO videos and some god forsaken poker after dark episodes, and feeling quite invincible I sat down at some PLO cash tables. I did quite well too! And a few heads ups. And did well there too.

Alas, my terrible BRM caught up at last and halved my bankroll in a single downswing. Now i'm back to grinding 0.2+0.04's and feeling damn annoyed... Why aren't there cheaper heads up games on poker770?!!